“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
On Saturday 6th April 2024 at the Scottish Greens Spring Party Conference, I watched a tense and angry Patrick Harvie deliver the last rights to any hope of the SNP-Greens Alliance making meaningful progress together on a Just Energy Transition for Scotland. Shortly thereafter the alliance collapsed ignominiously with much finger pointing regarding who was to blame for missing most of the Scottish key environmental targets to 2030. There was precious little mea culpa and even less learning from the time together in Government. A month later this in turn sank Humza Yousaf who could no longer govern effectively.
One of the key contributory factors to this bitter “divorce” has been the Scottish Government’s enthusiasm for developing and publishing strategies which have little or no hope of implementation. This results in a short-term “dopamine hit” as “we’ve thought hard about something (culture, energy transition, drug deaths…) and these are our views”. Now just watch!
Regrettably this is rarely (if ever) followed up by much implementation. “A Culture Strategy for Scotland” is a prime example. This 61-page document was published in February 2020. It opens with “Scotland is a place where culture is valued, protected and nurtured.” And continues in the same vein throughout. Regrettably so little progress had been made in the next three years it was felt necessary to issue in December 2023 “A Culture Strategy for Scotland: Action Plan”. This 21-page document begins “Scotland’s culture is world famous. From the Borders to Shetland our extraordinary creative organisations, practitioners and passionate communities come together to create truly remarkable work, which we know has areal impact on the country’s social and economic wellbeing.” In the subsequent 18 months Scotland’s creative sector has been racked by crisis upon crisis. Funding is inadequate. Institutions fold. The most iconic cultural building in Scotland (Mackintosh’s Glasgow Art School building) remains in ruins (unlike Notre Dame which was rebuilt in 5 years). So much for the valuing, protecting and nurturing.
In July 2024 Mariana Mazzucato (the Director and Professor in Economics and Innovation & Public Value at UCL) and Laurie Macfarlane (co-director of Future Economy Scotland) published a 75-page document entitled “A Mission-Oriented Industrial Strategy for Scotland”. This begins “Scotland faces an enormous set of interlocking challenges: the need to revitalise the economy while also transitioning to net zero tackling inequalities. These goals are not mutually exclusive.” Mazzucato is highly regarded (“the star economist who inspired Sir Keir Starmer’s “missions” (The Telegraph)). She is currently working with multiple European Governments and has had excellent access to the senior ranks of the Scottish Government since Nicola Sturgeon’s time as First Minister. Her report is well-crafted, eloquent even, and bold in scope. She describes the complex and interlocking nature of many of the key challenges. The need for bold urgent multi-agency responses. The mix of emerging and legacy issues faced by the Scottish Government and the complexities of operating with a limited co-dependent political mandate. It’s a compelling work, albeit perhaps lacking much insight on the “how”. Or on the cost. Or the “grassroots” needs and expectations of us 5.6 million Scots. Or apparently even the emerging thoughts of the Scottish Government itself.
In September 2024 the Scottish Government issued its own 54-page “Green Industrial Strategy”. This starts “In the past two centuries there have been dramatic shifts in the sources of energy which power the global economy. Whether this was the move from wood and charcoal to coal in the nineteenth century or the transition to oil and gas in the twentieth century, each has driven extraordinary innovation, growth, and social change. Each of them brought challenges and each created extraordinary new opportunities.” It sets out 5 key areas of potential competitive advantage: the wind economy, carbon capture/storage, green professional services (with global reach), hydrogen, “Scotland as a competitive centre for the clean Energy intensive industries of the future”. As is the “house style” there is precious little detail. In fact, the only dimensions appearing in the first 9 pages are bizarrely the intention to “build 110 000 affordable homes by 2032” …at an annual rate higher than the total completed since 2018…now that’s undoubtedly ambitious! Perhaps less ambitious is the intention to “Explore the potential and impact of modern methods of construction in rural and island contexts” …a visit to any Scandinavian community might provide a rapid “exploratory route”.
Predictably the Scottish Greens professed outrage at this document. The lack of attention to tidal and solar energies. The “fig leaf” of carbon storage for the oil and gas sector. The pile on included (perhaps predictably) Scottish Labour (“detail-light”), trade unions (“nowhere near…bold and transformative action”), the Lib-Dems (lack of Scottish supply chains). Far from creating a sense of the “extraordinary new opportunities” this document seems to have largely highlighted the threadbare nature of Scottish Government thinking.
Curiously, it also almost wholly ignores the 4-month-old thoughts of Mariana Mazzucato. No mission-oriented strategy this. Not one reference throughout. Perhaps some heavily camouflaged nods. But that’s it. Strange.
But like the 2024 Mazzucato document, we, the Scottish people are curiously absent. As consumers. As communities. As stakeholders. Our needs are assumed. Our future described for us. Amongst all the “world class” and “circularity” and “reforming” and “modernising” there’s almost nothing specific for us. Number of jobs? More equable community benefits from wind farms? “Glide path” for those of us in the oil and gas industry? Lower tax burden from better managing the renewables sector for Scotland? Restored landscapes? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Certainly nope.
Many years ago, my Mum (a well-educated, environmentally savvy Ayrshire resident) asked me (after the largest onshore windfarm in Europe was announced to be built 5 miles from our family home) “Do you think there will be much in this development for the people in Ayrshire?”. Regrettably in 2008 upon commissioning the answer was no. Foreign manufactured turbines. Foreign ownership. No community fund. No impact upon consumer prices. In 2024, despite 16 years and billions of pounds worth of subsequent investment if most communities were to ask the same question about new developments, the answers would largely be the same.
There is another path. In 1972 a Norwegian Labour MP Rolf Hellem, wrote what became known as the “10 Oil Commandments” which formed the basic framework for all oil and gas activities on the Norwegian Shelf. And ultimately formed the foundation for the creation of a world-class industry, built one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and transformed the future of the Norwegian people for many generations to come. Rolf had travelled to the US and Canada to see how their well-established industries worked but rightly elected to craft a Norwegian-specific set of responses. Despite huge uncertainty about the scale of the energy resources. Despite enormous pressure from vested foreign commercial interests. Despite internal political wrangling…Rolf put the Norwegian people at the centre of his rules. Their needs. Their future…jobs, wealth, sustainability of the resources, value capture. And the rules were clearly written. Simple to understand. Bold. Implementable. The rules “stuck”. For decades. Through boom-and-bust cycles. Changes of government. Despite the rise of competing basins. Despite Norway’s “small” stature. And the rest is history.
We have one boom industry in Scotland. The strategy industry. It pours out tens of thousands of words. We drown in a flood of superlatives and hyperbole. So much intent. So little action. Endless pages and pages of dramatic language and deep contemplative “insight”. Regrettably little, if any, of this helps address any of the myriad opportunities and challenges we 5.6 million Scots face.
When Dorothy and friends finally plucked up their courage to meet the Great and Powerful Oz he was “a very good man…just a very bad wizard…”. It’s time we pulled the curtain aside and revealed just how badly served we are by our strategy wizards.
Neil Gilmour is a former energy industry senior executive recently returned to Scotland having led numerous successful world-scale projects.